Perspective...

I'm going to keep this brief, as I can't even be bothered to listen to myself at the moment.

Have experienced an interesting range of emotions this evening. Started off quite chipper, moved on to having a mild panic attack, and have ended up feeling profoundly sad (as if there was any other kind).

Find myself thinking I need a holiday, but then I remember that I'm a philosopher and the idea of a philosopher needing a holiday is liable to provoke scornful laughter in anyone who has a real job.

Ultimately though I realise that I am just one of millions of tiny, absurd and self-obsessed individuals stumbling about confusedly in this world. I just haven't quite decided whether this is something I should consider crushing or comforting.

Tomorrow, however, is another day. I'll work it out then.

Confession...

I am here to make a confession. Not of guilt, but in a rather old fashioned sense. The Latin word in the Bible from which 'confession', in both the Catholic and Augustinian senses, is 'confiteri'. Psalm 32:5 in particular seems important in this respect:

"I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid."

What interests me is the idea of not hiding. God will know your sins, so the point in confession is not to inform God, but just to be honest with oneself in front of God. Now, I don't believe in God, so that isn't really an option. But I still think there is a great virtue in being honest with oneself. So it is in this sense that I confess.

The truth is, I'm lonely. I've been fairly consistently single for almost three years now. What I miss most is waking up next to someone. Waking up alone can leave me feeling unutterably sad, which, needless to say, is not a wonderful way to start your day.

However, the question arises as to what the relationship between my loneliness and my sadness is. I suspect that, rather than being sad because I am lonely, I am lonely because I am sad. I have a melancholic temperament at the best of times, but I don't think this equates to being sad. For the most part, I am relatively content, I think. Even when I am happy, I'd still say I am melancholic. And when I am happy, I'm not lonely. In fact, I think I'm somewhat prone to being a bit of a loner when I am happy. Of course I enjoy seeing my friends when I'm happy, but I rarely feel that need to be around other people.

Of course, it is distinctly possible that the loneliness does cause my unhappiness, and that the loneliness simply comes and goes of its own accord. But I'm inclined to believe that feeling lonely is symptomatic of a wider frame of mind. It's the same frame of mind that makes me stare into the distance, considering the virtues of starting a new life somewhere else. It's just a desire for change, change in which I can be someone else.

The distinction is an important one, as this kind of loneliness would be a selfish one. To desire romance as a salve for an aching heart is just another form of self-medication, and one in which we have the potential to hurt others. When we are unhappy, we often lack self-confidence, and it is natural enough to look to others for reassurance. But when we do this we run the risk of bringing negativity into their lives, of draining something from them. Unfortunately, I speak from experience on this matter. It's not something I hugely wish to experience again...

And it is often the case that what we desire is an idea of what someone can do for us, or an ideal of what romance should represent. Giacomo Leopardi's poem 'To His Lady' is a beautiful example of this; a man lamenting that his lover can never live up to the Platonic form of femininity with which he is truly in love.

I suspect, oddly, that loneliness is not a good reason to go looking for love. Maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe I'm just trying to rationalise my clear inability to find love. Justify not trying. I certainly haven't been proactive of late, in this regard. It's not that I don't occasionally see someone I find attractive, I just don't seem to be able to translate this into any kind of motivation to talk to said attractive person. And when I occasionally force myself to do such things, I tend to lose interest rapidly. All of which lends credence to the theory that I'm not really looking for companionship, but simply a remedy to ennui.

And so I confess my sins. I am going to try and overcome my loneliness and concentrate on being a better person. To look after myself better than I do. To find the confidence in both my life and my work so that I can be at peace with myself. Of course I will never be free of melancholy and sadness. I wouldn't want to be; sadness is part of the human condition, and helps us empathise with those around us. But hopefully I can achieve a state of mind in which I am, for the most part, content. And, in this state of mind, maybe I'll find myself capable of engaging with another human being in a manner characterised by respect, compassion and love.

Aristotle claimed that, in order to love others, it is necessary to love ourselves as well. I have to admit, I've occasionally wondered whether the reverse may not also be true; that we must love others in order to love ourselves. In truth, there is probably something to both of these maxims. This, for me, is because we are never alone; our lives are always intertwined with the lives of others. Who we are is necessarily related to who we live alongside. As such, how we perceive and behave towards others necessarily effects how we perceive and behave towards ourselves. It is a circular relationship. The key is in learning to enter this circle in the right spirit. My task for now is to cultivate that spirit.

Talking to Squirrels

After having spent most of this morning hiding from the grey skies outside and trying to play the intro from A Message to You, Rudy on the harmonica, I decided to try and make myself useful and do a few things around the house. Unfortunately, this also started me thinking (as many things do). Specifically, about how useful I might be. A brief approximation of my skill set follows:

• Intelligent, in a bookish sort of way
• Can be quite resourceful, when needs be
• Happy outdoors and in the company of small animals
  
• A decent vocabulary
  
• Basic ability with a number of musical instruments
• Relative physical fitness (if the point of comparison is Chris Moyles)
• Ability to bake rather good bread
• Fondness, if not aptitude, for handicrafts
• Capable of getting up (quite) early in the morning
• Good listener
  
• Fairly disease resistant
  
• Soft hair & decent beard

I like to think that all of these things have an intrinsic value of some sort or another, but I've been struggling to think of quite how I'd market them and myself as "useful" in any significant way. There aren't a huge number of jobs that call for such talents. The only one I could think of was that of Twee Woodsman. Essentially this would be someone who spends their days talking to squirrels and fashioning jewellery out of acorns. Unfortunately I don't think there are many career openings of this kind around at the moment.

Do let me know if you hear of anything though, dear reader. In the meantime I'm going to do the washing up (a skill which may well feature heavily in my future working life).

Baking

I've taken up baking relatively recently. I really enjoy it.

I can't entirely remember why I started. I've been finding myself increasingly craft oriented for quite some time. Never was a hugely creative person growing up. Or I can't remember being. But as you get more interested in art and music, you want to start creating yourself. In the last couple of years I've definitely tried to embrace that. I've started playing music more, and have tried to dabble in various other creative activities. It's fun to make things, and to use your hands for something. Baking certainly works for me on that level.

I tend to find myself drawn to creative people too, including a number of people who are good bakers or cooks. Not people who do such things professionally, but people who enjoy it and have a talent for it. One friend in particular is a very good baker, and I enjoyed hearing her talk about baking. One occasion in particular, where she spoke about making brownies and improvising based on what she had in her kitchen, stands out as something that made me think; "I want to do that."

There was also a TV programme called The Great British Bake-Off to which I found myself somewhat addicted. I really loved how passionate these people were about their baking, and how much it mattered to them. I can't remember if I'd started baking before I saw the programme, but even if I had I'd say it must have encouraged me.

For the most part so far baking has been something I enjoyed doing, something relaxing and satisfying and something I could share with my friends. But, in the past few days I've found myself thinking about it differently.

I think this was triggered by an e-mail my mum sent me. I'd previously e-mailed her with a picture of some bread I had baked. A little visual proof of my activities. Her reply included this:

"Your bread looks delicious, nanny would have been proud of you she loved making her own bread. I remember when I was little and there was a bread shortage (I can't remember why, maybe a baker's strike) loads of people in the village asked her to make them some and the smell of fresh bread seemed to fill the house for days. My favourite was a fadge which was round and not too deep."

I'm sure my mother did not intend to induce any particularly profound reflection in me, but it did a little bit. I was really touched by the idea that my nan would have been proud. I've never been very good at family. I don't dislike any of them, but I certainly don't make as much effort as I should to stay in touch. I very rarely saw my nan over the last decade of her life, and even when I did I can't say I made much of an effort to engage with her. So, even if it comes too late, I'm happy to think that we share in a common love of baking. I think I'm going to try and find some of her recipes (I've already made an apple cake of her devising, which is delicious).

I'm also rather touched by my mum's brief story of her memories of baking. It occurs to me that baking is something to which a lot of memories must find themselves attached. Sense memory is a powerful thing, and smells in particular are very good for evoking them. And baking is, among other things, an olfactory delight. Hopefully baking memories are mostly good ones; brownies and discord don't go well together. It'd be nice to think that someone might one day come to associate the smell of baking bread with a happy memory involving me.

Not that I'm really sure what all this thinking is going to achieve. Here's just to hoping I keep making bread.

Eden

I lost my faith
Some time ago
Scattered by
An ill-thought word

And if I remember
What you said
I'll heed your call
And find a way

I'll find a way

Through this candor
And through the blame
My sunny heart
Will shine again

Eden will grow
In seven days
I'll take you there
When I find a way

I'll find a way

We only love
What we believe
But over stolen glances
We'll find a way
And in those stolen moments
We'll find a way

Love and Sociology

Hello there.

Philosophy is often rather draining for me. I just seem to struggle to understand how people are thinking when they write what they do. The other day, for example, I was reading something about the affective dimension of conscience; the way in which our conscience calls out to us via the emotions, and how the relationship between self and other is mediated by our emotional existence. But the writer in question decided to focus on the emotion of shame. Shame may be an important part of our lives, and our conscience. But I just couldn't get my head around why someone would choose to make it the defining characteristic of our moral involvement with those around us, when surely love and compassion are at least as important? It left me feeling rather alienated.

But more recently I have been reading the work of a Spanish sociologist called José Ortega y Gasset. He's a rather charming and intelligent writer. He has a lot of good ideas too (although he seems to have predicted that the English would be responsible for the disappearance of the handshake as a form of salutation, which as of yet hasn't transpired to the best of my knowledge). But what I enjoy most about reading his book, Man and People, is that he has a much more romantic soul than the majority of academic writers. The following passage, for example:

"There is no more superlatively human relation that that... between the man and the woman who love each other... This man is in love with this irreplaceable, incomparable, unique woman... Now, what the two lovers do most is to talk to each other... the love of lovers, which lives in looks, which lives in caresses, more than all lives in conversation, in an endless dialogue. Love is talkative, warbling; love is eloquent, and if anyone is silent in love, it is because he cannot help it, because he is abnormally taciturn... love is the attempt to exchange two solitudes, to mingle two secret inwardnesses - an attempt that, if it succeeded, would be like two streams mingling their waters, or two flames fusing into one."

Now, leaving aside the heteronormativity of this statement, I'm not even sure I agree with it. Silence seems a much more natural thing around someone you love than with anyone else. Perhaps he simply means that love cannot stay silent forever. Or that love calls out to be spoken. Even if this was the case, sometimes silence can be the greatest expression of the nobility of love (or it can be if you're Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, at least). I get the feeling that this isn't what he means though. I suspect that Ortega means that love requires and is based upon communication, and the desire to communicate. Which is true, but it overlooks how intimate silence can be; an intimacy of a sort that can only ever emerge when words are put to one side for a while. But, despite this, I take great comfort from the fact that this all exists, especially in an academic context.

Maybe all I need to do to find my place is move to Spain (half a century ago). Or maybe Ortega felt as out of place as I do now. Either way, I find the above rather beautiful, and all the more poetic for being philosophy (of a sort) as well as poetry.

All The Same

You choke on your thoughts
As you chain smoke cigarettes
Trying hard to forget
How he made you feel that way
Oh, boys are all the same
And maybe I am too

But honey, don't fret
I'll be there for you
The world's not such a lonely place
Or it doesn't have to be

And you would always laugh
At all those bitter jokes
A broken heart can be a funny thing
So maybe you see something we don't
But we'll crack a smile for you
And just be ready for the fall

So honey, don't fret
I'll be there for you
The world's not such a lonely place
Or it doesn't have to be

And if I may be so bold
All that glitters isn't always gold
He's telling lies you never told
So just remember that you deserve more
C'mon darling get involved
I promise that we'll beat them all